Observer for a group of students?

I am a case manager for about 20 students. I would love to be able to be an observer for each of my students, in all their classes. Is there a way to do that easily? I don't want each teacher to have to add me and the other case managers as an observer individually for each student, that would be too much work.

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Hildi_Pardo

Hi Paula,

Unfortunately there is not an easy way to do it. The way you described (adding each of you as Observers and linking to the students you observe) is the way to do it.

In our district we created a role (actually two roles) called "Non Editing Teacher" -- on is "Non Editing Teacher with Grades" the other is "Non Editing Teacher No Grades." These roles allow a teacher to add a colleague to their course and view everything in the course (but not be able to edit anything). Obviously the "Grades" part keeps that part private. This role would allow adding an observing teacher without the extra step of linking to a child. It could be something to discuss at your district.

mzimmerman

Hi @paula_d_levy

An observer pairing can be done by the instructor to pair an observer with a student in a single class. It can also be done by the student, or by the Canvas admin, to pair an observer with a student for all of their classes, as is done for parents.

There is some general information about student/observer pairing at

https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Canvas-Resource-Documents/Observer-Account-Creation-and-Pairing/ta-p/387090

and instructions for the student to generate a pairing code to let you link to them as an observer at

https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Observer-Guide/How-do-I-link-a-student-to-my-user-account-as-an-observer/ta-p/539

Hildi_Pardo

Hi @mzimmerman -- I think there is a difference between an Observer Account (parents) and an Observer Course Role. The pairing code that students generate, I think only are for parents who create Parent Observer accounts. In the case of Paula, she doesn't have a parent account, but rather is Staff and is being enrolled in a course with a Role of Observer. I'm not sure if a student can give the pairing code to the Staff person (?? but maybe yes??)

petern

yes, @mzimmerman is correct. You can become an observer for multiple students. Easiest way is asking the Canvas admin to do this by SIS. They need to upload a file like this:

observer_id	student_id	status
paula	alice	active
paula	bob	active
paula	clarisa	active
paula	devon	active
paula	erica	active
paula	freddie	active

Hildi_Pardo

That makes me wonder about pros and cons -- if done as a file upload it may be less work for a teacher, but could potentially add a lot of requests for a Canvas admin. In our district, staff observers can change many times during a school year. Also, when enrollments are done as a File Upload, teachers cannot remove those observers if that staff person is no longer observing their student, and the teacher and observer would have to wait for someone with system admin to remove them. But if they add them manually, I think they also should be able to remove them manually. It's good to know the different angles or unforeseen consequences.

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